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Watch Jeff Zwart take the Porsche 953 off-roading

January 5, 2014

We ran into Jeff Zwart at the Porsche Macan reveal event just ahead of the LA Auto Show. He and Porsche Panorama editor Pete Stout were enthusing about Porsche's inclusion of the 914 in the Macan intro video. Your author joined in the chorus. Since 914 dorks are already a special breed of Porschephile, Zwart is most definitely a very special breed of Porschephile. He has conquered Pikes Peak in 911s and owns one of Porsche's 1971 Monte Carlo Rally 914s. He also has a 906.

Given that the company spent 2013 celebrating 50 years of the 911, Porsche had a predictably heavy presence at last year's Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. With so many special Neunelfers flooding the Monterey Peninsula, they took the opportunity to shoot a bit of video on the area's dirt roads with Zwart behind the wheel of a 953, one driven by Jacky Ickx in the Paris-Dakar rally. Birthed on the cusp of the 911 SC/3.2 Carrera transition, the 953 features a version of the Carrera's engine paired with a mechanical 4WD system that later saw use under the first batch of Dakar 959s.

Debuting after the Group B concept car but before the 959, the 953 is from an era when Porsche found itself in flux. The 911 itself had remained rather static since the 1974 introduction of impact bumpers, seeing only powertrain improvements and marginal refinement. The complex 928 hadn't become the 911 replacement the company had initially hoped it would be. The no-expense-spared technological-terror 959 had yet to set the tone for the following decade of 911 development. Porsche didn't exactly know what sort of company it was in 1984, though its motorsport division was bashing out victories with the 956, a streak it continued with the all-conquering 962 that arrived at the end of the year.

Porsche's product lineup today doesn't resemble its stable from that period in any way, shape or form, save for the fact that the company still sells a rear-engined 2+2 model called the 911. There's no four-cylinder entry-level car. Today's "cheap" Porsche is a turbocharged six-cylinder ute making a smidge more power than the company's top-spec vehicle from 1984 — the vaunted 930. Its mainline water-cooled V8 resides not in a front-engined GT, but in sedans and SUVs.

The jacked-up-really-high 4x4 953, however, foreshadowed the modern Carrera 4, Cayenne, Panamera, Macan and Turbo models, arguably giving it the strongest link to Porsche's modern lineup — though the 956's innovative dual-clutch gearbox and the 935/78 Moby Dick's water-cooled cylinder heads could also rightfully lay claim to future Porsche consumer-product developments.

Though it seems like a bit of a raw and crude mashup by today's standards, the 953 is more than a "Hey! Lookit that weird 911, Milt!" footnote. It was the lodestar guiding Porsche toward the future in 1984, even if the company didn't realize quite how prescient it would wind up being. And if you're one of those "history-is-bunk, tl;dr" types, just hit play and listen to the thing.